


Howard

by CrimsonWriter



Category: Marvel
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Howard Stark's Homework Assignments, Updates Sporadically, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-05-28 19:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15056126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonWriter/pseuds/CrimsonWriter
Summary: Howard Stark has a bad habit of taking his son to school and assigning a metric ton of homework from beyond the grave.It's annoying, to say the least.





	1. Homework. Brilliant.

Tony scowls at the box. The old-fashioned cardboard cube is stuffed full of film reels and photographs and generally things that Tony wants no part of.

He kicks it over to JARVIS's scanning station.

"Do me a favor, J? Scan those, lemme know if there's anything important."

His AI sounds apprehensive, like he doesn't want to scan through them any more than Tony does: "Yes, sir."

* * *

By the time that JARVIS maybe has something important—for any of the projects—Tony's all but forgotten about the box. So when JARVIS gently makes a noise and Tony whirls around, expecting to see the specs for a modified gauntlet or a reply to the debate between him and a feisty engineer down in R&D (over modded NERF guns), he sees Howard.

And boy, that scares the shit out of him.

"JARVIS?" he asks slowly.

"It's Howard, Tony."

The inadvertent reply is so seamless to his query that Tony's immediate thought is, _of course Dad invented time-warping Skype_.

(Don't look at him like that, it's been a bit crazy between the irradiated scientist, the WWII soldier still in fighting shape, and the alien with god powers. Time-warping Skype could be on the table, too!)

Then Howard laughs rather self-deprecatingly. He mutters something to himself and straightens.

"Today is December 16th, 1991."

Tony sinks back into his chair that he'd leapt out of. His parents had died only hours after this video was filmed.

"I don't know when this will be found," Howard continues. "I don't know what will have gone on. I'd like to hope that Tony is the one to view this, however long down the road that it will be. This is an insurance video, one of hundreds that I've made and destroyed when it became evident that the insurance was no longer needed.

"Maria Stark and I have been working with the SSR to found a new intelligence agency since the forties."

Tony's eyebrows shoot up. _Since Captain America went into the ice_ , he guessed.

"Short story shorter, we succeeded." Howard scrubs a hand over his face—evidently makeup-free. "Something went wrong, years ago. Code name was Operation: Paperclip. Nazi and Hydra scientists recruited to our laboratories to continue their findings, though in a more humane way. They infected us. There are Hydra sleeper agents within SHIELD."

Tony blows out his breath. "Thanks, dad. Something else for me to—"

"Maria and I will be driving to the Pentagon tonight," Howard says, sighing. "We'll tell them of the breach. But if not…

"On the off chance that I'm not speaking to Tony, get him." He paused for a moment. "I hope you find someone who you can admire, Tony, but also someone you constantly want to shake. You…might understand. If you ever become a dad." Tony's father shifts uncomfortably, the most human that Tony's ever seen him. "Newton knows you think I'm a bastard, Tony, and I'm man enough to admit that I probably am. I hope that you eventually realize that half the reason that I yelled was because I didn't know how to encourage you."

Tony arches an eyebrow.

"I don't know if you remember, Tony, if you find this fifty years from now, but fifteen-year-old Tony would all but blow raspberries at me if I tried to say good job. Pointing out different pieces and suggesting different materials would get me a barrel full of spooky cats. Telling you to do better gets the temper tantrum from hell. No, Tony, I don't know how to talk to you. But thanks anyway for the biggest laugh I've ever had when you built a radio on wheels that followed Maria around and sang nothing but love songs."

Tony personally remembers that particular incident with the radio on wheels flying through a wall (thanks, Mama) and Howard so mad that he couldn't speak.

In hindsight, his red face and inability to speak was probably because he was holding in laughter, and then both he _and_ Tony would have been in the doghouse when it came to Maria.

"I wasn't allowed to say anything to you because Maria told me that you'd take that and run with it," Howard confessed. "And I'm sorry, kid, but I can't go to board meetings with sex music blaring."

The image of his smartly-dressed dad strolling into the board of assholes and being trailed by an amalgation of parts blaring slick jazz or Earth, Wind, and Fire was an image that was _priceless._

And it was even funnier because ten-year-old Tony would have _totally_ done it again had Howard laughed, let alone shown appreciation for the inadvertent prank.

Tony laughs.

"That being said," Howard continues, sobering, "Be careful. They're sneakier and deadlier than even I want to think about." He scowls to himself. "Also…if I do die tonight, Tony…look up Bucky Barnes. You know who I mean. I'm starting to think that all of us failed him in not bringing his body home."

Howard drags in a deep breath. "See ya, kid."

His face cuts out, to be replaced with twenty-second shots of a file of an assassin so elite that he was a myth to myths.

But real. Too fuckin' real.

The only noise is the hum of electricity pervading the room.

"JARVIS?" Tony finally asks.

"Sir?"

"I think Dad gave me twenty-year-old homework. How the hell does he keep doing that?"

"If he was anything like you, Sir, I would not at all doubt that he was thirty or forty years ahead of his time," JARVIS says placidly. "He apparently also had an incredible amount of resources at his command, with his contacts with the military and CIA, as well as SHIELD and even parts of HYDRA. If you had kids, Sir, I believe that you would delight in assigning them homework from the grave, as well."

"You know me too well, J," Tony mutters, a wry smile tugging at his lips.

The assassin's file sprawls out amongst the holograms.

He cracks his knuckles, and asks, "So, JARVIS, how would you go about finding a spook?"

An updated file pops into existence, with highlighted words for Tony's viewing.

"I would call the last person who saw him and lived to tell the tale," JARVIS says, and a black window pops up on Tony's other side with the caller ID:

 **Stabby Russian  
** Dialing…

 _"Romanov_. _"_

"Widow, I got a very interesting video from my dad. Part of it mentioned someone you've come in contact with before."

There's a very long pause. "I'm working. Gimme five minutes, and then I want that video for information on the Winter Soldier."

"Deal," Tony agrees immediately.


	2. I Know What We're Gonna Do Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha's history is far too complicated.

Five hours later, the Black Widow is in his kitchen, making hot chocolate from scratch while watching a tablet play the video that JARVIS brought to Tony's attention.

"That's something," she says, sounding half-admiring. "I've never known his name. Only a nickname and codename."

Tony laughs bitterly. "God, you don't even know, do you? Bucky Barnes is one of the most famous men in American history."

Romanov shrugs. "I'm Russian. Or I was. The only history I care about is the one that I’m living."

"That's living history, alright," Tony agrees. "James Buchanan Barnes was born in 1917 and met a scrappy, half-starved Steven Grant Rogers at the age of nine."

He swipes a finger across the tablet to change from the Soldier's 1991-era file to a picture of two half-grown boys in black-and-white, one clearly an un-serum-ed Steve Rogers, and the other a cocky Bucky Barnes. Then again, to see Barnes giggling like a maniac at something Rogers said. Then an after mission report that Rogers filed—the 24th of December, 1944—in which Barnes was declared dead.

Romanov breathes something in Russian that he is fairly sure is the Russian equivalent of "Fuck."

He stirs the pot of hot chocolate for her, since she's occupied.

"Steve will be crushed," she whispers.

"Rogers will go batshit insane," Tony agrees. "And I can't hardly blame him. If that had been Rhodey…"

Romanov purses her lips. She sighs. She fishes for mugs from one of the cupboards and pours the pot of hot chocolate into two cups, and fills the rest of hers with vodka.

"I am not going to be drunk enough for this talk," she mutters as she gulps some of it down. Romanov silently offers to pour some into his chocolate. He tips his head.

She fills up the rest of the cup with it.

(It's surprisingly tasty.)

"Sit, this is a long story," she says. "You called me up because of my mission in Odessa, Greece. My mission was to keep a scientist safe. Soldat shot him through me," she says, pulling up her shirt to expose a scar about the size of a quarter on the right side of her abdomen. "His mission was not to kill me, so I was not killed, only collateral damage."

She drinks some more hot chocolate.

"That's it?" Tony asks, bewildered.

"The Red Room took little girls from orphanages and either killed them from stress or grievous wounds or turned them into assassins," Romanov says out of the blue. "I was, obviously, the latter. Once we got past a certain stage, people were brought in to train us when they ran out of things that they could teach us by themselves."

Tony feels a little bit like a teenage girl when he sits up straight and says, " _No_ ," like it's going to stop anything.

"Yes," Romanov says, a sardonic smirk on her lips. "They brought him in, he taught us how to use other weapons other than our bodies. Knives, guns, anything in reach. He taught us to use our surroundings to our advantage."

"No wonder you're fuckin' scary," Tony comments, and takes another steaming sip of the spiked hot chocolate.

Romanov barks a throaty laugh. "He gets sent away after he's done his job. Life goes on…and goes out. A few years later—"

" _Hell_ no," Tony interrupts. "You didn't—"

"I did," she interrupts him. "A few years later, the Russians send us out to tackle someone and make a show out of it—I can't even remember which politician—but it was like he didn't recognize me at all from only a few years before."

Tony sighs.

"We ended up doing such a good job that we got sent out together more and more," Romanov says. "It was the longest he'd ever been out of cryo—"

"Cryo?" Tony questions, jumping on that word like a sugar-high six-year-old on a trampoline.

"Cryostasis, much like the dear Captain—only intentional," she explains. "It was the longest he'd ever been out of cryo; he was out for almost a year. By the end, it was like he was an entirely different person."

"Am I allowed to laugh if you say that he took you dancing?" Tony asks, genuinely wondering.

For a split second, she looks actually taken aback, and then frowns. "Something that he was famous for, back in the day?"

"Bucky Barnes was _the_ ladies man," Tony says dryly. "Ask Rogers; he'll tell you about these two sisters that Barnes somehow managed to score a double date with whose names were _Connie and Bonnie_."*

Romanov is silent for almost a full minute before she makes a strange snorting noise and slumps over the counter, laughing silently. Her whole body is shaking in her mirth. "You can't make that shit up," she gasps out. "What the hell, Stark! Why do you know that?"

"Rogers will talk until pigs fly once you get him going," Tony says. He pauses. "Bad metaphor, we'll have flying pigs any day now. Correction, Rogers will talk until you stop him once you wind him up and set him loose on the unsuspecting populace."

" _Bozhe moy_ ," she sighs. "Yes, Stark, you are allowed to laugh when I say that he took me dancing."

Tony visibly restrains himself from giggling maniacally.

" _Anyway,_ " she says pointedly, "the mission finished and he disappeared again. I haven't heard of him since the mission in Odessa. I wasn't even sure if he was still alive after I finished the year-long mission with him until Odessa."

"So we've got a murderous matryoshka doll on ice that would much rather be a thawed-out, swing-dancing ladies' man," Tony says thoughtfully. He notices, out of the corner of his eye, that Natasha swallows a mouthful of hot chocolate a bit hard when he says it. Whether she's disgruntled at herself for being taken in or swallowing a laugh at the black humor is anyone's guess. "Out of morbid curiosity, what did you—or they—call him besides the Winter Soldier?"

"The Winter Soldier is a code name," Natasha says. "He was called Drakov by the handlers."

Tony remembers the footage of Natasha and Loki discussing her past: _"Dracov's daughter, the hospital fire—"_

"The ones that he trained—you were called his daughters," he says slowly.

Natasha eyes him warily. "Spit it out, Stark."

"'Daughter' generally implies some sort of—I don't know, affection? Newton save me had I been born a girl, my dad would have never recovered and our already rocky relationship would have been flambéd—but still, not the point. Would he, like, come and rescue you if he thought that you were in trouble and in full possession of his facilities?"

She blinks at him slowly, like a cat assessing the need to smack something. "Had he possession of his full mind, he would be awfully confused at our relationship."

Tony sighs. "But still affectionate, right?"

"We started as mentor/mentee, then father/daughter, then lovers, then enemies. _I_ get confused if I think about it for too long."

Tony gives up and drinks his hot chocolate. "This is not helpful. Do you have a way to get his attention or not?"

"You don't want the attention of the Winter Soldier," Natasha says blankly.

"I want the attention of Bucky Barnes! Or Drakov! I don't care which!"

"Bucky Barnes is dead!" Natasha shouts suddenly.

"He's gone through seventy years of brainwashing and torture, you think I don't know that?!" Tony yells right back. "Tony Fuckin' Stark is dead, too, and he only had three months!"

They both sag back into their chairs like puppets without strings.

Natasha stands, drains her chocolate, and turns to the door. "Look, Stark…if you really want to bring him in, I'll see what strings I can pull from the old days. But bring in Clint. He's the only one idiotic enough to trust a Soviet Union spy and assassin at his back _before_ she flipped."

"Natasha," Tony says before she can exit, stage left. "Be careful at SHIELD."

She tossed him a sloppy salute as she sashayed through the door to the elevators.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *canon. If you look at the casting list in the end credits the girls Bucky (and purportedly Steve...) took out had the names of Connie and Bonnie.
> 
> I've been on a Phineas and Ferb streak lately, you have no idea how hard it was for me to not have Tony say, "JARVIS, I know what we're gonna do today!" XD
> 
> Next chapter: In which Clint is a dumbass. Which is par for the course. (This is comics!Hawkeye btw. I love Jeremy Renner, I just don't like how little they do with his character. So, if you want, imagine Jeremy Renner as the dumbass Hawkeye from the comics. I seriously don't think that you could come up with a funnier-in-a-Murphy's-Law's-Bitch-kinda-way guy.)

**Author's Note:**

> This particular story will cover at least the problems addressed in the Winter Soldier. I don't anticipate this being very long. It's also my Civil War fix-it (possibly in the next story?). Sort of. Very sort of. 
> 
> I just have a lot of feels. Yes, Steve was right about needing to get the Accords fixed (hello, emergency response time would be DAYS!), but he didn't need to a) lie to Tony about his parents' assassinations, b) lie by omission for who's body killed them, and c) make it all worse by not backing down after Tony found out the worst way possible. But while Tony's reaction to seeing the video and being blatantly lied to for years is perfectly reasonable to me, Steve's reaction to the Accords is…overblown.
> 
> I get that half the team don't have regular human emotions and instead are aliens, Hulks, soldiers with a serum that emphasize everything, emotionally inept geniuses, and assassins with seriously fucked up childhoods, but holy moly. Just because the world might actually need saving once in a while does not mean that the world will end every time you look away. The idiom 'a watched pot never boils' cannot be translated over to 'a watched world never ends'. I think we did pretty good for the first FIVE THOUSAND YEARS of civilization without the fancy-schmancy cameras the world over.
> 
> And it hurts my heart to see them not getting along at all because I adore Tony's creative genius and his general attitude towards the world and I love Steve's determination and all of that FIGHT in him. Those traits get them both into trouble but they manage to get themselves out of it, ninety-eight percent of the time. 
> 
> Anyway. Updates quite sporadically. IDK when I'll see you people next. Hope you enjoyed!  
> -Ruby  
> P.S.-if someone has the actual date that the elder Starks died, that information would be appreciated. Google was unhelpful beyond 1991.
> 
> EDIT: Thank you to kcbalfour for the date the Starks died!! Changed from Dec 12 to Dec 16. :)


End file.
